We Believe!

Today is the big day and our kids have been gearing up for it for a very long time.  Just one short year ago, I wrote this post about our concern that Hallie wasn't yet able to understand the wonder and joy of Christmas.  What a difference a year (lots of social maturity, and a whole bunch of very good therapy) make(s)!  This year, Hallie has been infused with the holiday spirit pretty much since Thanksgiving.   Both kids were thrilled to light the menorah every night for Hanukkah (and collect their presents and eat their chocolate coins) and sat around singing the songs they learned in school (Hallie even corrected my made-up lyrics to "Oh Hanukkah!" and was amazed at how badly I knew the song).  And Lea was and is all about wishing everyone around her a "Happy Hanukkah"!  Hallie still refuses to try potato latkes (explaining to her that these are a close, rounder and flatter cousin to her beloved french fries does not really help) but I suppose there's always next year.  After all, Hanukkah is all about miracles involving oil, so I don't see why we can't hold out for Hallie to eat a potato pancake bathed in olive oil.

Just as Hanukkah drew to a close, Sharon and I procured our very first live tree.  Even though we did not quite make it to the Christmas tree farm to which we envisioned traveling, I think heading down to the guys who sell trees at the corner of our block is nearly as good.  It also spared us shivering in the cold while weighing the architectural merits of one six-footer versus another and the harrowing drive back (likely an hour and a half) with a tree strapped to the roof of our SUV.  The girls did not seem to mind missing out on either of these experiences.

Hallie was a bit upset, though, when Sharon dragged the tree through our front door.  She lay on the couch pouting and when Sharon asked her what was wrong, she replied, "I'm upset mama!  Our tree has no lights!"  Apparently she thought we'd gotten the cheaper, less flashy model, and that simply would not do.  No worries:  we had taken care of that problem in advance and had procured some colored LEDs at Target and the tree was winking and shining in no time. 

The kids were even more ecstatic the following week when we decorated the tree with ornaments.  Our collection, which includes many ornaments that passed down to Sharon from her family, has a nice over-representation of preschool-friendly characters like Mickey and Minnie Mouse.  Hallie kept exclaiming things like, "Look, there's Mickey and Pluto!" and "I see a Nutcracker!" (they 'study' the ballet, The Nutcracker, at preschool each year, so Hallie is familiar with the music and the characters).  Both kids wanted to help hang the ornaments on the tree and our biggest challenge was slowing them down, not keeping their interest.

Apparently, the kids have been discussing their trees at school.  According to one report (we have a lot of spies...er, therapists...at school), Hallie went over to her friends and said, with feeling, "My tree is THIS tall" (as she demonstrated by getting up on her tip toes and reaching for the sky).  "And it has Rudolph on top!" 

Rudolph is an odd choice for a tree topper, but Hallie said this with such resolve that our spy (Miss Anne) was tempted to believe her.  And, indeed, Rudolph's existence as a tree topper can be confirmed:

Anyway, over the past week, the anticipation in this house has been tremendous.  First, there was ChristmaHannuKwanzika, which we celebrated last Sunday with the cousins who are off to Disney World tomorrow.  Then there was Wednesday night's Holiday Concert and Pot Luck at the YCCA Preschool.  The kids had been practicing all of their holiday songs at home for that event, which went swimmingly.  I hope to add pictures and description of both later on in a separate post.

But then, yesterday, after we picked up the kids from school for the last time this year,  we decided to get the girls back into their holiday dresses and head off to Macy's to visit Dicken's Village and Santa Land.   

The kids thought the life-sized rendition of the Dickens story (which was written in 1843.  The village has been put up each year since 1985 in Center City Philadelphia) was pretty cool, even if a bit scary (it's peopled by ethereal ghosts of Christmas past, present and future and these ghosts, and the graveyards where they shake their chains and such, are pretty realistic seeming in a haunted house sort of way). 

But the lines were long and we forgot to bring snacks, so Lea was a bit cranky by the time she got to Santa's lap.  Hallie, however, was excited to see the big guy and jumped up and down.  She also happily told him that she'd been a good girl and that she wanted him to bring her a pink camera.  He said he'd see what he could do about that.

Of course, the picture we took still has that old reindeer-caught-in-the-headlights quality to it:

Maybe one year we'll get both of them smiling.  At least they were fine getting up on Santa's lap and both of them were looking at the camera.

Hallie has taken this Santa thing very seriously.  For the past three weeks or so, all I have needed to do is warn her that Santa is watching over her like a hawk right now and is checking his list twice.  So if she wants that camera...  It's worked like a charm.  I am not sure what happens tomorrow, though!  I am sure that I am in good company on that one...

Today was a very low-key sort of day.  The kids were thrilled to see their grammy, who came to town this afternoon, to mark the official opening of Christmas Celebration 2010. 

We broke open the Gingerbread House kit for the occasion.  Hallie, who has been enthralled with the Hansel and Gretel story of late (though, as in most Hallie-authored rewrites of fairy tales, the witch turns out to be friend, not threat).  And one of the parents at school had put together kits for all of the pre-k kids (like Hallie) to make their own mini gingerbread houses, so she'd actually had a bit of practice in building such structures already.

At first things went pretty well for Sharon, who, as a Registered Architect, was put in charge of the project:

 The kids watched the process and sampled the candy.  Hallie announced that she was very hungry and proceeded to eat most of the bowl of Ghiradelli's Chocolate Chips that you see below:

But you'll note Lea's worried look in this next shot.  She knew that the roof did not meet code:

Even this was a Design-Build project, you'll note that our finished product looks nothing like the one on the front of the box.  Our architect assures us that it is not her fault:

This activity was followed up by much watching of Frosty the Snowman and a snack buffet for dinner.  Then it was time for bed.  But not quite.  First the girls needed their Christmas Eve present from us--new Christmas jammies. 

Hallie was overjoyed to open her Frosty jammies wrapped in a Frosty box covered with Frosty paper.

Lea, taking her cues from her big sister, got into the paper-wrapping spirit too.

(Aside: Note Lea's amazing hair in this shot.  We have scheduled her first haircut, which will take place on Tuesday, none too soon:

Once the kids were in their new jammies, we all ran outside to sprinkle the magic reindeer food that Hallie's teachers had sent home with her this year.  Hallie was thrilled to do this, because the sparkles would help guide Rudolph's nose to our house:

And then it was off to bed right away.  I have never seen Hallie move upstairs to bed quite so quickly as she did tonight.  And she began to heavy breathe right away--not because she was anxious (or at least we think this wasn't the reason) but because she was trying to will herself to go to sleep immediately.  She had confirmed with Sharon that she needed to be asleep for Santa to come and that Christmas would have to wait until morning.  (We had added this last proviso because, after all, this warning seemed prudent). 

And so it was.  The stockings were hung by the bookcase with care in the hopes that Old Saint Nick would be there:

Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, Fabulous Festivus to all, and to all a Good Night!

Ralph's World, 2010

One of our kids' favorite artists is Ralph Covert, of Ralph's World fame.  A rocker-turned-dad, Ralph's music is witty and easy on adult ears as well as fun for kids.  We discovered his music nearly a year and a half ago, when Hallie came home singing what she called the "lemonade song" (Happy Lemons) and then performed another, "Surfin' in My Imagination," which has become the song that Lea now most frequently requests by name.

Anyway, the kids were thrilled that we got ticket to the World Cafe Live Peanut Butter and Jams concert at which Ralph was performing.  They were accompanied by cousins Hannah and Adam, who had a blast, as well as by their friends Taylor (Renee's and Kim's little girl) and Mia and Sebastian, who are two of our friends' Carmen and Vicky's grandchildren.  

Hallie was excited to wear her guitar dress to the concert:

She had a great time dancing to the music, though it turns out that she was a bit scared about performing on stage (she went up with her little friends and a bunch of other kids when Ralph invited them to join him but was a bit put off by the whole thing).


That did not stop her from joining a kiddie conga line when invited by the little boy (standing behind her) who had his eyes on Hallie for the entire concert.

And it certainly did not keep her from dancing with abandon with her big cousin Hannah:

But it did mean that she kept looking to us for reassurance, which translated itself into snuggling into our arms.  Here, Sharon is holding both Lea and Hallie, whilst Renee is holding Taylor, who has somehow managed to fall asleep:

While Lea appears to be asleep in the above photo, she is not really dozing off.  Indeed, she popped up and began to dance and sing (through her binkie) when Ralph played the "Ringmaster Song" (the title track of The Rhyming Circus).

And Hallie, as usual, was excited to meet and greet Ralph in person, both before and after the concert.

A great time was had by all and Adam, in particular, has been converted to a groupie of cult rocker Ralph Covert.

Lea Time

Because Hallie gets a lot of itinerant services (occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech therapy) and is in a social skills inclusion group that meets at the girls' (wonderful) preschool three times a week, Lea and Hallie are on slightly different school schedules.   Both kids at school for stay full days (until 5:30pm) on Mondays but I pick up Lea at 3pm on Fridays and Hallie remains at school for another two and a half hours.  While this complicates matters for me (I feel like I am circling back and forth to the YCCA endlessly on Friday afternoons), this somewhat odd childcare arrangement has afforded me some very good opportunities for one on one time with Lea.  As a second kid and as a younger sibling of a somewhat complicated older sister (who consequently gets dragged to therapy sessions and spends an awful lot of time hanging around in waiting rooms), I think it's awesome that the two of us get some quality time together.

Often, when I show up to pick up Lea at 3:00pm, I find her like this:

 

I find this ironic since she almost never goes down for a nap for me (at least not easily while we are at home and Hallie is here with us).  The best I can hope for is that she conks out in the stroller when we are headed to or from some activity; otherwise, she fights to stay awake since she might miss something important.  In contrast, at school, she goes down easily for her teachers, Miss Janet and Miss Rachael.

After Lea awakens (or I coax her gently from sleep), she's ready to go.  First we excavate her lunchbox in search of snacks.  On the off chance that she has finished everything (and that everything usually amounts to quite a spread that includes a couple of chicken nuggets or chicken salad; some peas or edamame; fresh fruit; something crunchy like yogurt covered pretzels or Barbara's vanilla animal crackers or 'fishies'-- Pepperidge Farm goldfish -- and yogurt, I carry spare crackers or pretzels with me for an impromptu additional snack.  In decent weather, Lea would request a visit to the playground across from school.  Here's a picture of Lea swinging in her favorite swing.

Whilst swinging, she'll point to the "castle", by which she means Sparks Shot Tower, which was America's first shot tower, constructed in 1808 by plumber Thomas Sparks and his partner John Bishop.  It's 142 feet high.  The reason it's so tall is that, before mechanization, the only way to construct perfectly round musket balls, or shots, was to pour molten lead from really high places.  Bishop was a Quaker.  Manufacturing gun shot was an uneasy job for someone whose religion avows non-violence and so he quit the business when it began to supply musket balls for the War of 1812 (before that the shot was used in hunting).  The last great musket battles were fought in the US Civil War, and Shot Tower produced war materiel for the Union Army engaged in that conflict.  Anyway, long after its product became obsolete, the site was slated for adapted reuse and is now part of the Philly Rec Department. 

I think Lea is quite correct in assuming that it looks like a castle:

It's gotten a bit too nippy for regular playground visits (I literally got Lea stuck in one of those swings when I bundled her, and her snowsuit, into one on a particularly blustery day a couple of weeks ago.  I literally had to turn the swing on its side and shove her out of it that way, which was somewhat harrowing since she's gotten pretty big).  So we've taken to visiting the nearby dog run where she can watch the dogs play from the comfort of her stroller (snowsuits and blankets and all).  The neighborhood dog owners get a kick out of Lea who engages the dogs in full length, complicated conversations; squeals with joy; and begs for 'hand kisses' from the pooches.

After a playground visit and/or a dog run, Lea will often ask if we can repair to the local cafe.  She hangs out and has a snack with me like a big girl:

She often rejects her own sippy cup or even a box of Horizon organic chocolate milk in favor of my drink (in this case a sugar-free vanilla Italian soda).

After our snack, we're usually ready to pick up Hallie.  While Lea loves spending time with me, she is always ready to get her big sister.  She adores Hallie and worships the ground upon which she walks (and wants to do everything that Hallie does, which sometimes brings the two of them into a bit of conflict since Hallie, as a typical older sister, wants to call the shots and set limits for Lea).  So she's always thrilled to go back up to the school and get her sister.  But I like to think that Lea enjoys our quality time, too.  I know that, down the road, she might not be so satisfied with spending time with me when Hallie gets to play with therapists and ride horses and have extra classes.  And I certainly hope that we can make it up to Lea by getting her special classes and doing things that satisfy her interests.  But I must say that I love this Lea time and it's some of my best spent time all week.

Cousins!

This is a seriously belated post, but I am going to try to catch up with the posts that I meant to compose and publish.  I guess we were too busy trying to catch up with life to tend to our real one over the past few months...

Here are some very cute shots of Hallie and Lea from a November weekend that they spent hanging out with their 'little' cousins Hannah and Adam. 

In these two, the kids are all lined up and walking hand-in-hand in the drive outside of Grammy's condo:

Here they are the sole audience members at a children's puppet show in Atlantic City.  While it was sad that they were the only ones who came to the show, Hallie got the opportunity to get in some face-to-face personal time with one of the puppets.

 And here they are, lined up and walking along the walk in AC.

And racing along one of the AC piers:

And here's a close up of the girls doing the same thing:

 Alas, Sharon did not get any good shots of the kids from their slumber party or the AC Aquarium, but suffice it to say that the kids really enjoyed themselves no matter what they were doing and no matter how badly the photos that the grownups took turned out!

Stay tuned for more updates as I try to continue to catch up on the posts I failed to compose over the past six weeks!

Lea the Ham

Lea gives us this look (which is a sort of a cross between a smile and a smirk) about two hundred times a day.  She'll do something cute (or naughty), see if we are watching, then meet our eyes and smirk, and do it again, and again, and again.

Lea can definitely be a handful, but boy is she cute!

Clearly, next year we need to find a ham costume for this kid!  (Thanks, Nadia, for the great idea).

Halloween Pictures

This year, Hallie is all about holidays.  She's aware of the structure of the calendar for the first time (they are studying the days of the week, the months of the year, the seasons, and their respective holidays in her pre-K class at preschool this year and Hallie appears to be following along with the lessons quite nicely).  Hallie loves costumes almost as much as she loves chocolate (plain, nothing mixed into it, please!), so Halloween, the first real holiday of the fall term, is naturally quite attractive to her.  And I cannot help but think that somehow she knows that this was the first holiday that she spent with us at home after being sprung from the NICU on October 10th.

Four years ago, Hallie went as a baby dragon:

 

We chose this costume because Hallie sounded an awful lot like a dragon when she made noise (which was not terribly often, truth be told.  Little did we know that this was one very good indication that her vocal cord was paralyzed).  Not to mention the fact that the costume, which was essentially a little green and purple robe into which we bundled Hallie, was easily compatible with the tubing that went with Hallie's oxygen canister. 

Needless to say, Hallie did not trick-or-treat at all that first year.  She hung out and napped in her stroller while I distributed candy to other kids.  That was activity enough for our not-quite-one-month-adjusted micropreemie who weighed in at about seven pounds, soaking wet.

Four years later, Hallie still loves dragons.  But she didn't want to be one for Halloween.  Instead, like a lot of girls her age, her choice was Tinkerbell.   Hallie had been looking forward to this event for weeks and somehow we managed to keep her dress clean (there was a last minute run in with some chocolate ice cream that fortunately ended well) and her light-up wings from getting bent out of shape.  

Here are a couple of shots of her at the annual school Halloween parade (which, sadly, I had to miss this year since I was teaching on the freakishly warm--with highs in the mid to upper 70s--Thursday afternoon on which it was held):

 

 

Here's a shot of Hallie with some of her school mates:

It was a bit harder to figure out what Lea wanted to be for Halloween.  At least in part this was related to the fact that Lea does not really enjoy donning costumes.  She grooves on trying on other people's shoes and she can get into wearing hats.  She's even eager to dress herself in whatever laundry (clean or dirty) might be awaiting transport down to the washer or up to the bedroom for folding and stashing away.  But costumes are not her thing. 

We did buy her two, and she did end up wearing both.  The first--a fairy butterfly outfit--was more suited to warm conditions, but did not make Lea very happy at all.  This was the best shot of her that we got:

Much more representative of Lea's response to the entire event are these pictures:

Lea was no more thrilled to wear the second costume which we bought her, which was more appropriate to the very cold weather that we had on Halloween proper.

Here's Lea not enjoying being the Cat in the Hat:

Hallie, in contrast, really enjoyed posing with her cousins, Red Devil Hannah and Adam ("Anakin") Skywalker in advance of heading out to collect candy:




Lea perked up a bit when she realized that we'd be heading to the development down the road from where the cousins live in Lea's trusty Radio Flyer wagon:

She also became markedly more enthusiastic when she realized that trick-or-treating involved being given vast quantities of chocolate, of which she is very fond.

Here's a picture of Lea in cousin Sarah's arms.  We are pretty certain that she got extra loot for being so cute:

 

By the end of the evening though, it had gotten seriously cold, and Hallie was shivering in spite of the fact that she was wearing leggings on top of tights and a long sleeve shirt underneath her costume.  She took refuge under the blanket that we had brought with us (on the urging of Aunt Laura, who was smart enough to realize to know how cold it was going to get once the sun went down) and all you could see of her were her light up wings:

The kids were completely tuckered out on the drive home (though they each demanded and ate a bit of their chocolate).   And they're still eating their way through their stash (and will be for a while).

Well, at least it's still not quite Thanksgiving, so perhaps I can be forgiven for posting these pics so belatedly!

Lea-isms

(This post was begun on October 27th and not finished until November 10th.  I think that this says a lot about our lives right now!)

There are so many cute things that Lea says and does, and we don't want to forget any of them.  (What we do want to forget is the fact that she slept not at all last night, and instead kept popping her eyes open, calling out for one or another of us, and wreaked havoc with our already-fragile circadian rhythms.  But that is a [sob] story for some other time).

Anyway, Lea has been super cute lately.  Her vocabulary is phenomenal and she is speaking in complex sentences [most of them four to six words in length; she also follows multi-part directions really well.  At least when she wants to ;-)].

She is a huge tease.  When I come in to wake up Hallie in the morning, I often use Lea as my alarm clock.  I'll say to Lea, "Lea, tickle Hallie!"  And Lea will sidle over to Hallie (or leap frog over Sharon to get to Hallie) and start ticking her and will say "tickle tickle."  She'll do the same thing to Sharon and Zen (who, being a cat, is mostly perplexed by this creature that used to be his size and now can take him down in a wrestling match).

But Lea enjoys being teased as much as she loves teasing. Her latest shtick is to encourage me to smooch or tickle her. She'll offer me her neck and exclaim "moochie on the NE--CK". The second I start smooching her, she'll giggle and yell:  "Hey, stop it!"  If I stop bugging her, she'll present her neck or belly to me, and ask for tickling, and then once more yell "Hey, stop it!"  And if, ultimately, I comply with her request and cease and desist once and for all, she will start tickling herself and yell, "Hey, stop it!"  She is a very odd creature.

I don't have a picture of Lea smooching us, but I do have one of her smooching the Mama Bear at Three Bears Park, which is often where I take her after school on Fridays:

The other thing she's doing these days is letting us know that she's pooped by saying (logically enough): "I POOPED". She'll then lay herself down on her changing pad, sometimes after grabbing a diaper, and present herself for a change.

Once I open up her diaper, she'll look up at me and say, "P-U, I stink!" I asked one of her teachers, Miss R., whether she ever does this at school, but she never does. So I guess it's a cuteness she reserves for us.

Speaking of school, Sharon just met with Miss R. for parent/teacher conferences. Apparently, Lea is the most verbal kid in her class and is someone who is trying to get all the other kids to talk (with some success). She's consistently using two -to-three word sentences and her goal for the next few months is to begin using three-to-four word ones. [To put this into some perspective: this was Hallie's goal last year (when she was three turning four). So it startled us a bit that this would be a goal for a kid who was not yet two.]

Lea also initiates play with her peers and adults and is more social than her mates. That's another way in which she is decidedly un-Hallie like.

But our two girls are very similar in a lot of important ways:

•Both love music and both know the words to more songs that I can believe. Both like to sing and hum all day long and are very enamored of learning the proper choreography/hand motions to the songs that they sing.

•Both are really into letters and numbers and were early alphabet-reciters and counters. We have no idea whether Lea can recognize letters yet (Hallie could at 20 months corrected) and we don't really care. We know that they both love words and books and that this will translate on its own into loving reading (this is something that Hallie already is working on).

•Both of the girls are really into art these days.  Lea has taken the lead on this one:  she's always loved coloring with crayons and markers (and happily doesn't mind if these markers are the Color Wonder variety).  But lately Hallie is into real coloring, too.  I suspect that she is finding it easier to hold her crayons and markers and not nearly as painful to draw as it used to be.

Lea does have a bit of a disadvantage in terms of height, though.  This has not stopped her.  She devised a workaround:

Lea figured out that, if you move the puzzle cube out just a bit, you can create the most delightful step stool.  And if you get bored with your artwork, you can always dump those puzzle pieces all over the floor.

•Both kids are into jumping, a lot.  Lea has long been a bit jealous of Hallie because her older sister can actually clear the floor.  So Lea has been working on skill-building.  She can now clear the floor and jump in place a bit.  But that's not good enough for her; it's much more fun to jump off of something.  Here she's working on jumping off of the aforementioned Three Bear statue:

•Both are chronically cute. Incurably so, really.

To prove the point, I promise to (eventually) upload some Hallowe'en pictures to the blog and to do so before Thanksgiving!